FREE! After the visit, kids and their parents receive copies of their health information at no cost. For each participant in the study, you also receive a gift card for your time.

We will ask the child’s parent to fill out a questionnaire during the visit. The questionnaire takes about 15 minutes to complete and does not have to be completed in one sitting. The questions will cover your child’s diet and development. To learn more about your child’s diet, we will ask you to complete an Automated Self-Administered 24-hour Dietary Assessment Tool (ASA24) where your child’s food record from the past 24 hours can be entered. To learn more about your child’s social-emotional development we will ask you to complete the Ages and Stages questionnaire.

For urine and saliva, we use a method called the deuterium dilution method. Your child will be asked to drink deuterium-enriched water, which researchers also call “heavy water.” This is completely safe and is simply water that can be measured. Throughout the visit, we will collect urine and saliva samples and measure the amount of heavy water in them, which allows us to calculate body composition.

Visit our DXA Scan page to read more about what it is and what it measures.

DXA Scans are safe and reliable for all ages. The amount of radiation used for this procedure is small, much less than a person would receive from a chest or dental x-ray. The radiation dose for a DXA scan is about the same as the radiation your child is naturally exposed to in the environment in less than one day.

A researcher or technician will be present in the room at all the times. For infants, we have safety measures to keep them secure on the scanning table.

Our Shape Up! Keiki study includes all ages below 5 years old, so it’s important to us to make sure any age is comfortable and safe. For many of our scans, we have special procedures for infants.

For a DXA Scan, we typically wait until the time of day when your baby is most relaxed and may swaddle them to keep them still.

For the Bod pod, we have a special version called the Pea pod. This tool allows us to take the same measurements with your baby laying down.

Lastly, 3D optical scans can still be done using a clear crib. This allows a full body scan to be taken without the need for standing and keeps your child safely in place.

The time can vary depending on the participant. This will be a one day visit where we move through each scan and test at a pace that works best for your child. We allow time for breaks between procedures and ensure all participants are comfortable before starting a scan. Most of the measurements will be completed in the first couple of hours and the rest of the time will be for a few last tests, such as urine tests. In total, we estimate the visit taking around 5 hours.